The Questions are More Important Than the Answers

Tag Archives: Blogging

Central banks

Since I started learning about bitcoin as an alternative to traditional paper money, I have often wondered why we have come to accept banking as it is constituted today. There are lots of problems with the current banking system but we are so conditioned to it that we don’t consider it’s problems to be problems.

We accept all the problems with banking to be normal. Is it normal that a signed cheque should take days to clear? Why is it expensive to send money from the west to developing countries? Why do banks close at a certain time? Why is access to my own money controlled by institutions like banks and governments?

Central banks decide how much money to print and put into circulation. They are causing financial exclusion by their actions. Is poverty a conscious decision made by banks and those who control them?

There are many questions that need answers but most people have never thought to ask. We have never realised there are problems until bitcoin started solving them.

Fiat currency

Fiat currency is backed by the trust we place in the government issuing it. When we begin to lose trust in the issuing authority, then the currency crumbles like a deck of cards.

Fiat currencies have crumbled in many countries including Zimbabwe. The question is why? Why do we lose trust in government and central banks? Their decisions have caused financial exclusion. There are billions of people across the who are either unbanked or underbanked. The golabal financial system has failed to appreciate the value that these people bring to the table.

Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is a financial disruptor. It is a peer to peer payment system without a central controlling authority. Anyone can participate including the unbanked and underbanked. Its value is derived from its network of users

Bitcoin solves all the problems that we are facing with banks and institutions.

I have realised that I can blog, podcast, and video blog at the same time and it’s stretching my time. I have decided to focus on vlogging.

I know that with vlogging, I can use the footage to create blog posts and podcasts. I can even write books with video footage.

As they say, a picture tells a thousand words and a video tells a million words.

The great thing is that I don’t need expensive equipment to get started. Eventually I will do, but for now I can use my iPhone, iPad, and Mac. I have invested in screen-casting software so I’m good to go!

Today I want to address some of the questions that I get in my inbox on social media. It is a good question on sales and it just gave me an idea to share.

I was asked how many books I have sold so far. I did not give my friend any figures. I said I would release the figures at some point. If you’re selling something, sales figures are important but I think it depends on what you are selling. If you’re selling bread, you expect the figures to be higher because it’s a perishable product.

When I started writing books, I was not looking to sell and get immediate high sales. I knew it was a long term game. I knew I had to be patient and persistent. People don’t produce best sellers overnight unless they produce something special first time.

I have to build my profile as a writer. If I write everyday you like I’m doing now with blog posts and monthly ebooks, I will establish myself as a writer. I think everyone should write. If you can tell a story, then you can write. If you can’t do it yourself, then get a ghostwriter.

There are platforms where you pay writers for articles and even ebooks. I prefer to write them myself because no one can communicate my ideas the way I want them told. I want my personality in my stories. If ever I am to use a ghostwriter, it would have to be someone who is actually living with me and documenting my ideas.

You have to identify your strengths. What is your preferred mode of telling stories? Is it text, audio or video? I can do all three so that splits my time between writing, podcasting, and video blogging or vlogging. But where do I get the content to do this?

I tell stories about what I do. We do a ton of things on a daily basis that we never talk about. We do when we meet friends but we could be writing about the same things on a daily basis. We could create podcasts and make videos of the same.

There’s a good reason why telling stories has become very easy. It’s called the internet and social media platforms. With a smartphone and an internet connection, we can write, podcast, and produce video with just this gadget. Right now the smartphone is the grossly under- yehutilised gadget. We’re using it to largely consume content rather than produce.

I have seen videos on Instagram where the person in the video waves frantically because they’re trying to get your attention. In another video the person says hey, stop scrolling and listen to this. They want my attention. Attention is the new currency. Once you have my attention, you can try to sell me anything.

So why are we fighting for attention? The internet has democratised attention. When all we had was terrestrial radio and television, those who could make it to the studio had our attention. Advertisers used these platforms because that’s where the people’s attention was based.

The attention has now shifted to the smartphone and to social media. You’re most likely reading this blog post on a smartphone or on social media, or both. I’m writing it on an app called Ulysses on an iPhone. I like to use writing apps such as Ulysses, Scrivener, and iAWriter because of their advanced formatting functionalities. I will then publish the blog post using the WordPress app on the same iPhone.

I will need to include some pictures or graphics. For pictures I normally use www.pixabay.com app on my iPhone. For graphics I use the www.canva.com app also on my iPhone. The new iOS 11 operating system allows me to Make screencast videos on my iPhone and iPad. I show how to use these apps by recording my iPhone or iPad screen.

I have not even got out of bed yet. I can do all this first thing in the morning before I get out of bed. It doesn’t take me time to do this because I write as I think. I’m telling simple stories of what I do so I don’t need to do massive amounts of research.

The only way I complement my writing is to copy and paste my articles into Evernote so that I can use the suggested articles at the bottom of the note. These are articles generated by Evernote which have the same keywords as my blog post. I can improve my article using these and referencing them. I do this for some articles depending on whether or not I get the time.

Once published, I use www.grammarly.com on the desktop version of WordPress to make improvements to the article. I also use the www.yoast.com plugin in WordPress for search engine optimisation (SEO). This helps my website to rank better when people search for the kind of information that I publish.

If I persistently tell stories about the things I know, and use social media platforms to amplify my message, I will find people who want to pay attention to this and they will most likely buy my books. It’s that simple. We buy from people we know and trust. Social media platforms give us the opportunity to build relationships and trust. If we do what we say we are going to do, we become a more trusted brand.

We have to realise that each and every individual has now got the opportunity to behave like a media company. It means they can produce content for anyone to consume. The competition for attention is getting tougher hence some people have to do ridiculous things to get attention. But I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to trick people into giving you attention. You just need to produce the content that people want to consume. You can either educate or entertain or both.

I’m an educator with entrepreneurial tendencies so that makes me an edupreneur.

It’s true that practice makes permanent. If you write everyday, you will find your style. My minimum is one thousand words. I find that quite easy to achieve because I write my truth, the things that I hold to be true. Now, you might disagree, but you don’t have to. They are my truths, what are your truths?

Mistake

The mistake we make is to try to impose our truths on other people. We don’t have to be sane. We don’t have to think the same. We are different and that is a beautiful thing. I like telling stories because they’re my stories. They are the things that I have done. So there’s no debate.

Stories

I tell stories because the brain is a story processing machine. We love stories. We are told stories from a very young age. And we love them. The cartoons that children watch are stories. Some cartoons combine the story mode with actual teaching of certain ideas and values. They’re playing the role of parenting.

Document

If you write about what you do, you can’t run out of things to say. Even if you do nothing, you can talk about that. You can’t run out of yourself. Tell us why you do little or nothing. Sometimes it’s because you don’t have a plan of your own. In that case, you end up following the plans of other people. The mistake people make is to talk about what they’re going to do. People don’t care about your future plans. They just want to know what you have done. You can talk about your future plans in the context of what you have done so far. Like saying, what’s next for you now that you have done this.

Changing Blog

My blog is changing. In this world, if you’re not selling something, then you’re always buying. The more you buy, the more money you’re losing. You have money because you’re selling your time to your employer. So your time is not important to you because you’d rather give it to your employer.

I have come up with a few products which you will find on my website. I have always wondered how some websites look so great until I came across the idea of a landing page. Everything I do when blogging I have taught myself. www.leadpages.net is a platform that allows me to make brilliant landing pages. I have been able to create a landing page for my courses, my books, and my shop.

The crucial thing that I have learnt is that I have to collect email addresses. If you don’t communicate your products and services through email, you will not be able to effectively sell them. If you can’t sell, you can’t make any money. Focusing on creating products and services is great, but selling them is even better.

Having a great product or service is not enough. If you do not market, people with poorer products will sell more than you. Gone are the days when it is enough to just have a great creation, you have to exploit social media and email marketing to sell.

Products

I am developing products that will bring in some income. One of them is blogging. So how does blogging bring in money? How do you monetise a blog? Google has a tool called Adsense. It allows advertisers to place adverts within your blog. The bigger the audience that is reading your blog, the more the adverts are likely to be seen, and the more revenue you’re likely to earn.

The other product is online courses. The internet has changed. It has transformed from static web pages into audio and video. It has become the social web. Educators have been complacent about adopting the current state of the internet into teaching and learning. Now there’s a gap between the teacher and the students. The Prussian model of education is not motivating to the students. We now have to manage behaviour because the students are not happy with the current education system.

Some people have set up companies that help teachers with managing behaviour. What does it mean that we’re managing it? It means we accept it and so we have to manage it if we are to teach.

There’s a place where I do not need to worry about managing behaviour. It’s the online course. If there was a problem, it is easy to resolve.

Readers

Increasing the number of readers is the number one priority. Readers want to be entertained or to learn new skills. As a teacher, I’m a natural educator of new skills. When you train to become a teacher, you take a module on pedagogy. Pedagogy is the theory of teaching. You learn how to teach any content. So not only can I teach physics, but I can teach anything I want.

Readers decide what they find educational or entertaining or both. I find that students want an entertaining teacher. I think it’s to do with the whole concept of gaming. There’s Instant gratification and feedback from games. Games allow students to make their own stories and confront the consequences of their decisions. The classroom environment is the exact opposite.

Physics

Most people do not want to learn physics. It’s hard and irrelevant to them. Maybe they want to learn how to blog or to run a YouTube channel. That I can also. So I’m creating courses which I will host on www.teachable.com. My Academy will be a mix of all the different skills that I have taught myself and also my professional skills as a physics teacher. I think doing physics has given me the self confidence that a lot of people lack. I can ask any questions and challenge any ideas.

The Scientific Method Of Enquiry

People who are not scientists are worried that science has not answered all the questions. But if it does, there will be nothing else for scientists to look forward to. In fact, scientists don’t say we can’t answer certain questions, they say not yet. We’re working on it. Every scientist uses the scientific method of enquiry to investigate scientific questions.

One Thousand Words a Day

Daily Blog

My blog is changing because I will be writing every day. I am always trying new ways of making it better and this new change is going to do just that. I am resuming my daily target of a minimum one thousand words a day. These words become the content for the rest of the day for repurposing on my other platforms. The crucial platforms for me are this blog and the YouTube channel. My YouTube channel will include screencasts, webinars done through Google Hangouts, and YouTube live streaming. In fact, it’s a combination of many formats.

Writing comes naturally to me and I always try to write as I speak. Writing is about telling stories so the more the content sounds natural, the better. If you’re struggling with writing, it’s because you’re trying to behave like a writer instead of writing to become a writer. So just start writing. Write as you think. People identify with a thought process. They want to see a story unfold. The human mind is a story processing machine. We process stories whether we’re reading a book, listening to the radio, or watching television. We are entertained by stories.

What to Write

I’ve said that a writer experiencing writer’s block should write about writer’s block. We are always thinking of something, even thinking about thinking. One of my good mentors on YouTube has said that the moment you start thinking a lot about your anxieties, get up and start doing. Instead of pondering about what you should do or haven’t done, get up and start doing. Doing is the only variable we can control. There are many things we cannot control the weather or the actions of other people but we can control what we do. By doing things every day, we kill procrastination. Procrastination is the biggest liability to success in life. If you procrastinate a lot, write about procrastination. What makes you procrastinate?

Some people become frustrated in social media platforms by people who just talk and never do anything. But I always say that talking is doing and I always give Oprah Winfrey’s example. The more she talks, the more money she makes. We’re failing to monetise our debates, arguments, quarrels etc. We don’t understand the new business models and opportunities on the internet. The web is a marketplace because there are many people there. Where there are people, buying and selling will take place. You buy and sell. The more you sell, the more money you get. The more you give, the more you receive. This is why there are freemium and premium products and services.

Writing is telling stories so write about your stories. Write about what you know, your experiences. I have taught myself many skills, so that’s what I write about. Right now I’m using the Ulysses writing app on my iPhone, so I can write about this app. Before I publish this article using WordPress, I will use Grammarly to edit and make it more readable, so I can write about these two applications. I have been teaching for about 20 Years now, so I have so much to write about regarding education and the teaching of science in general, and physics in particular.

What to Podcast

Podcasting is brilliant. It’s just talking. Forget the fancy word. It’s talking. We talk every day. It’s the thing we learn to do before we can even read and write. We learn to vocalise through imitating those around us. I have observed that members of the same family have a certain way of speaking. As we grow and meet new people, we tend to copy the way those we look up to speak. We always reflect our environment. We would not develop human speech if we are brought up among the chimps.

There are many platforms that I use for podcasting. The most convenient for me is www.anchor.fm. It’s a smartphone app which is easy to use. It’s easily accessible for random thoughts and telling stories. As soon as you finish talking, you broadcast it straight away and you also repurpose it into an iTunes podcast or a transcribed YouTube video. The creators of the app are moving very fast to improve the experience on the app. I think it’s the Twitter of voice. It gives you up to 5 minutes of recording but like I said, the developers are quickly introducing new features so the minutes may increase.

What to Vlog

I blog about the content in my blog post articles and podcasts. It’s the same stories. Why would I tell different stories on the different platforms? I love video because I’m blogging and podcasting at the same time. I can use words as well as graphics. I can use sound and video effects. This is the ultimate storytelling platform. If I was to focus on one form of telling stories, I would choose video.Best-selling books are repurposed into blockbuster movies (most of the time!). There are cases where the readers of a book feel the repurposed Movie has not done justice to the book. I felt the same with Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Justice was not done. Someone should do it again. I think when we watch a movie about a book that we have read, there’s a conflict between our imagination as we read the book and the imagination of the movie makers. When we read books, we individually process imageries of the people and the places in the book. That’s not what we find in the movie!

Repurposing the Experience

Repurposing means using all four forms of communication to tell stories: blogging, pictures, podcasting, and video blogging or vlogging. The story remains the same but people have preferences on how they want to consume it depending on what they are doing. If I’m driving, I prefer podcasts and audiobooks, if I’m home I prefer video. If I’m on public transport, I have more options, including social media interactions.